Oh, boy.
Iamthat, where do I begin? Let’s see, I’ll start with romance languages, where the plural of a word referring to a group including masculine and feminine automatically reverts to the masculine. As an example, if you’ve got a guy, “chico,” and a girl, “chica,” in Spanish, you’d refer to the two of them together as “chicos.” These languages don’t have a neuter gender as Latin and Greek did (but honestly, I don’t know about gender nouns in other, non-Romance languages, so if someone else could contribute I’d appreciate it), so it has to go to either masculine plural or feminine plural. This at least in part explains why “guys” is a gender-neutral term (and it is, at that; I find it used to refer to groups of men and women far more than I find it used to refer to specifically males). Oh no, what discrimination in choosing to go to the masculine plural! Dearieduck, we come from a long history of male domination. That’s history, it’s fact, and trying to change the language that comes down from it is, frankly, patently ridiculous. We don’t need to change “woman” and “female” to prove that times have changed, and to me it seems like a petty thing to concentrate your energies on. It’s just fucking language. Proof? Next time you go to the gym, remember that it derives from the Greek word “gymnasion,” which loosely translated as “the naked place.” Should we react and go ballistic because gyms of this day and age imply retroactively that we all oughtta be naked? What about symposia, today taken as an academic gathering of sorts? Symposia were originally drinking parties. Gasp! Better tell the English department to cancel the professor’s symposium next month – people might mistakenly get the idea that they can start drinking!
FTR, etymologically speaking, the words “male” and “female” come to us from completely different roots. “Male” derives from “masculus,” a Latin diminutive of “mas,” male. “Female” derives from Latin “femella,” a diminutive of “femina,” woman. You might think one comes from the other, but you’d be wrong (my *American Heritage Dictionary[i/] gets me that info, btw). I genuinely hope you’re not one of the people who buys the crock that “woman” derives from “woe of man.” Lovey, we ain’t that oppressed anymore, and believe it or not, changing our fucking language isn’t the way to get us out from under the horrible oppression of the patriarchy.
Finally, “femyle?” I was going to be nice about this, but fuck a buncha that: What the burning fuck? What on earth would possess you to change the “a” to a “y” of all bloody things?
ok I’m done its late…I’ll be back later…